Truecaller enters mobile payments in India

New Delhi, March 28 -- Truecaller, the Stockholm-based company that identifies spam calls and helps keep mobile communication safe and efficient, announced two new major features in Truecaller 8, a completely new redesign of its Android app at an event in New Delhi on Tuesday. Users will now be able to take control of their SMS inbox and will be able to send so-called flash messages.
Just like the app filters out spam calls, Truecaller will now be able to filter out spam SMS messages. As per Alan Mamedi, chief executive officer and co-founder, Truecaller: "Spam SMS account for 15% of all SMS messages sent globally, and represents 1.2 trillion spam messages each year. On average, every spam call is about 40 seconds long, so we will help save a lot of time." Truecaller users will also be able to send so-called flash messages or pre-defined messages with two taps to any Truecaller user to let them know if they are stuck in traffic, or send them their location, or that they have reached home. "We have looked at the use cases in India and later this year, we will enable small businesses to message and transact with their customers too, "said Mamedi.
The firm also announced three partnerships-two local and one global.
A new service called Truecaller Pay, where Android users in India can send or receive money securely over their mobile phone, in a tie-up with ICICI Bank Ltd was one of them. "This is based on the feedback received from the market that users wanted to be able to make a transaction straight from their Truecaller app, said Nami Zarringhalam, chief security officer and co-founder of Truecaller.
Also, Truecaller users will be able to create their unique virtual payment address (VPA) in the app, and can instantly send or receive money using any unified payments interface supported bank. In addition, users can also do prepaid and post-paid recharges. This feature will be available to the ICICI Bank and non-ICICI Bank users as well and follows a two-step authentication as per the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) guidelines.
Truecaller also launched the "Airtel Truecaller ID", which will extend the caller ID feature of Truecaller to Airtel's non-data users using feature phones, and will be delivered to users via Flash SMS.